Let WHATEVER Happens be OK
As i started thinking again about foosball recently, I realized that all the stuff i learned
about the mental game in golf applies equally to foosball (and actually life in general).
Golf has pretty much dominated my life (except for the 7 years I spent playing
foosball. I started playing golf when I
was 9 years old. I decided to become a professional golfer when I was 45
years old. I started learning how to play golf when I was 50 years old.
For the first 40 years or so I thought the secret to golf was a perfect
swing. I spent endless hours, thousands of practice balls and a ton of money
working on proper grip, left arm straight, slow take away, pause at the top,
start down slow etc etc etc. I was among that 97% of golfers mired in the
mechanics of the swing. Hey, that’s what I was told from day one!
I developed a pretty good swing (only took 40 years). Actually even
as a kid I had a pretty natural swing. My first instructor was a man named Jr.
Hardwick (don’t remember his real first name) who was the pro at Webb Air
Force base in Big Spring Texas. I think Jr. and his brother Billy had some
moderate success on the PGA tour back in those days. I have also taken
lessons, at one time or the other, from Jack Mann, Steve Johnson, Hank
Haney, Jackie Cupit, and several other professionals.
The point of mentioning all these great teachers is to say that I have
learned a pretty good understanding of the mechanical swing. Give me ten
minuets to warm up on the range and I can still beat the driver to the fence
and hit wedges into the barrels. And I’m 61 now.
Around age 45 I decided to pursue my dream of playing professional
golf. I played the Texas mini tours. I went to Florida several winters and
played the Tommy Armour Tour and several others. I went to the Senior Tour Qualifing
school three times. I made it to the second round once. I played some decent
rounds. I played some not so decent rounds. I worked hard on the range and
I worked hard on my swing.
After four and a half years of grinding hard on the mini circuits,
here’s what I learned. I learned that I was getting beat by guy’s who did not
swing any better than me. They couldn’t hit it any farther than me and they
couldn’t hit it any straighter than me! They were not better putters than me
and their short games were not better than mine! Were they just luckier than
me? No (although I must say I thought that sometimes) The only thing they
did better than me was score! wtf! Maybe I’m not pronating my left arm on
the backswing.
It became obvious that I wasn’t playing with a full bag. All my
coaches had touched on the “mental game” at one time or another, but for
some reason the importance just never stuck. But something was missing.
So, six months before my fiftieth birthday, I changed the way I had thought,
for nearly forty years, about golf. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was
when I started learning how to play golf.
We’ve all watched golf on TV. I have for as long as I can remember. I
always watched the swings and listened to the commentators describe the
shots. “Notice how the club face is open”, “See the left shoulder go under
the chin”, “Notice that the crease on the left pant leg is pointing toward
Jupiter” ad infinitum. And I would be on the practice tee the next day trying
to figure out which direction Jupiter was. I had never tried to figure out how
the great players were thinking! Once I changed my attention to their
thoughts, I came up with a whole new set of questions.
What were the top players thinking just before a shot (routine). What
were they thinking during the swing? And most important, what were they
thinking after the shot? How was it that they seemed to handle the “bad” shots so well?
The more I watched in this new way, the more obvious it became that
they all had sound games, but they also had a way of thinking that was
producing the results they wanted! More importantly, they had a way of
thinking that allowed them to deal with the adversities of a round. They
might show a little disgust at a “bad” shot, but I noticed that the displeasure
was almost always gone within a few seconds. How cool would it be to not
be upset at a “bad” shot? (not to let it carry over to the next shot)
How cool would it be to walk off the eighteenth
green feeling as peaceful as you were on the first tee? Even if you didn’t
play as well as you had hoped! I could see that these guy’s were, somehow,
doing this. The best way I’ve found to describe it is they were having fun
and they had learned how to let WHATEVER happened be ok!
So what does let whatever happens be ok mean? Lets start with what it does not mean.
It doesnt mean you dont care what hapens. It doesnt mean you shouldnt have goals
and work hard to get what you want. It doesnt mean you shouldnt have fun and enjoy
what you are doing. It simply means that you can choose not to experience all the
negative emotions that go with unwanted outcomes. Once you understand that negative
outcomes are not your enemy, your ready to climb the ladder.
Next - The Game of Black and White
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